South Island Clubs Table Tennis Tournament In Invercargill This Weekend

The 49th South Island Clubs Table Tennis Tournament is being held at Stadium Southland in Invercargill on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 September.

The tournament starts on Friday 20th September at 8.00am with the finals scheduled for Saturday 21st starting at 12.45pm.

Play will be graded with competition in A, A Reserve, B, C and D Grades with thirty tables required to accommodate the numbers.

Teams from all over the South Island will travel south for the event with teams from Invercargill, Gore, Papanui, Hornby, Richmond, Hokitika, Oamaru, Kaiapoi, Dunedin, St Albans and Shirley among the entries with 120 players in total.

The Invercargill Working Men’s Club team of Greg Buzzard, Phil Brocks and Blair Davies are competing again this year after previously having won the A grade title in 2013 when the event was held in Hokitika.

Phil Brocks has also been selected to represent Southland in a Senior Men’s Team along with Nathan Geraghty and Damian Mitchell at the NZ Table Tennis Championships being held in Christchurch on the 28th and 29th September 2019. Other notable players in the A Grade competition are Southlanders, Shelley Neal and Barry Ellis (IWMC), Gregg Davey of Hornby plus Mark Wilson and Derek Partridge of Richmond, all of whom have recently been selected to represent New Zealand at the Australian Veteran Championships in October.

Dunedin are the defending champions in the A Grade with Hornby the reigning A Reserve Champions. Hokitika will defend the C Grade title and Kaiapoi the D Grade. While the Invercargill Working Men’s Club will be defending their B Grade title the club last won the A Grade title in 2013 while they last tasted victory in the C & D Grades in 2009 and in A Reserve 1997.

The IWMC team that won the B Grade title last year was Keith Pyne, Steve McVicar, Craig McBurney and Stephen Burgess. Pyne and McVicar return to defend the title this year and will be joined by Greg Erskine and Richard Ruang.